Making the Sustainable University
This book documents strategies for universities engaging sustainability challenges through the education of global citizens on topics such as climate change, habitat alteration, species loss, resource depletion and contamination, food access and sovereignty, economic equity, and energy use. Different disciplines and operational units often have disparate ideas in mind when they work toward advancing sustainability. For example, some disciplines focus on environmental challenges (identifying impacts to ecosystems, mitigation and remediation strategies), some on greening of industrial and commercial practices while others address social equity—often there is little effort to connect these pieces especially while considering economic impacts. This book examines how Florida Gulf Coast University has attempted to infuse sustainability across curricula and operations as an integrated concept and our successes and shortcomings are instructional for sustainability practitioners on college campuses and other industries in a wide audience.
The Sustainable University
The direction of higher education is at a crossroads against a background of mounting sustainability-related issues and uncertainties. This book seeks to inspire positive change in higher education by exploring the rich notion of the sustainable university and illustrating pathways through which its potential can be realised. Based on the experience of leading higher education institutions in the UK, the book outlines progress in the realisation of the concept of the ‘sustainable university’ appropriate to the socioeconomic and ecological conditions facing society and graduates. Written by leading exponents of sustainability and sustainability education, this book brings together examples, insight, reflection and strategies from the experience of ten universities, widely recognised as leaders in developing sustainability in higher education. The book thus draws on a wealth of experience to provide reflective critical analysis of barriers, achievements, strategies and potential. It critically reviews the theory and practice involved in developing the sustainable university in a systemic and whole institutional manner, including the role of organisational learning. While remaining mindful of the challenges of the current climate, The Sustainable University maps out new directions and lines of research as well as offering practical advice for researchers, students and professionals in the fields of management, leadership, organisational change, strategy and curriculum development who wish to take this work further.
Integrative Approaches to Sustainable Development at University Level
This book documents and compares the experiences of a wide range of universities across the five continents with regard to sustainable development, making it of special interest to sustainability researchers and practitioners. By showcasing how integrative approaches to sustainable development at the university level can be successfully employed to bridge the gaps between disciplines, the book provides a timely contribution to the literature on sustainability and offers a valuable resource for all those interested in sustainability in a higher education context.
Sustainability on University Campuses: Learning, Skills Building and Best Practices
The implementation of sustainability initiatives on campuses is an essential component of promoting sustainability in the higher education context. In addition to reflecting an awareness of environmental issues, campus programmes demonstrate how seriously universities take sustainability at the institutional level. There is a lack of truly interdisciplinary publications that comprehensively address the issue of campus greening, and there is an even greater need for publications that do so at a truly international level. This book meets these needs. It is one of the outcomes of the “Second Symposium on Sustainability in University Campuses” (SSUC-2018), which was jointly organised by the University of Florence (Italy), Manchester Metropolitan University (UK), the Research and Transfer Centre “Sustainable Development and Climate Change Management” and the “European School of Sustainability Science and Research” at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (Germany), in cooperation with the Inter-University Sustainable Development Research Programme (IUSDRP). The book showcases examples of campus-based research and teaching projects, regenerative campus design, low-carbon and zero-carbon buildings, waste prevention, and resilient transport, among others. Ultimately, it demonstrates the role of campuses as platforms for transformative social learning and research, and explores the means by which university campuses can be made more sustainable. The aims of this publication are as follows: • to provide universities with essential information on campus greening and sustainable campus development initiatives from around the world; • to share ideas and lessons learned in the course of research, teaching and projects on campus greening and design, especially successful initiatives and good practice; and • to introduce methodological approaches and projects intended to integrate the topic of sustainable development in campus design and operations. This book gathers contributions from researchers and practitioners in the field of campus greening and sustainable development in the widest sense, from business and economics, to the arts, administration and the environment, and hailing from Europe, Latin America, North America and Asia.
Universities and the Sustainable Development Future
Since the mid-1970s, a series of international declarations that link environment and sustainable development to all aspects of higher learning have been endorsed and signed by universities around the world. Although university involvement in sustainable-development research and outreach has increased substantially, systematic learning from higher-education engagements has been limited. Universities and the Sustainable Development Future offers institutions of higher learning around the world practical guidelines that can be applied contextually to produce credible evidence regarding the outcome and impact of their teaching, research, and transnational-partnering activities. Drawing on innovative applications of lessons from experience with international-development cooperation, this book demonstrates the utility of a flexible framework that will inspire substantial improvements in the ways universities evaluate and improve their sustainable-development undertakings aimed at promoting Agenda 2030. This book promotes an inclusive evaluation framework that will allow universities to illuminate sustainable-development outcomes, and it provides a cutting-edge resource for students, scholars, and policy makers with an interest in sustainable development, climate change, and evaluation challenges.
